In his December 15 ruling, Judge John West ordered that the 11 union supporters be rehired with back pay. Smithfield says it will appeal the decision to the full National Labor Relations Board and then to the federal courts before reinstating the workers.

The ruling was "a clear victory for the union," Brian Murphy, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 204, told the press. "Smithfield management clearly violated the law and the judge saw that. The company's ploy is to take as much time as possible and not do what the judge told them to do."

The judge ruled that a future election be held outside company property, and possibly outside the county, to counter intimidation by the bosses. Several company lawyers and managers had lied under oath during hearings in the case, the judge wrote, including one who may have committed perjury and knowingly introduced false statements.

West's mid-December ruling on the union's complaint was not widely publicized until early January. Many workers who spoke to Militant correspondents outside the plant January 5 had not heard about it. Others had, and expressed hope that there would be a new vote on union recognition. "We need to vote in the union this time," said one Black worker. That workers are mistreated by Smithfield is nothing new, he added, "It's been like that all along."

Smithfield is one of the biggest players in an industry that has become increasingly concentrated. According to statistics on the UFCW website, Smithfield Foods kills some 20 percent of hogs produced in the United States, and controls the production of an even larger percentage. The company boasts that its Tar Heel plant, which employs 5,000 people, is the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. Smithfield had sales of $5.2 billion last year and record profits. In the second quarter alone its profits soared 600 percent over the previous year.

According to the UFCW, the injury rate at the Tar Heel plant is among the highest nationwide, and annual turnover at the plant is 100 percent. A Smithfield spokesman cited the high turnover to argue that the dismissal of 11 union activists was no big deal. "The union is protesting the discharge of 11 people out of 16,000 from 1993 through 1997, the majority of whom quit or were terminated" for their attendance, he said.

That's not how most workers view it, though, and management is determined to try to make the firings stick. One worker coming out of the plant said her supervisor told her the 11 fired workers would never work there again--the company would always be looking over their shoulders.

West's ruling, which is more than 400 pages long, documents not only firings but also how other workers were threatened and interrogated by Smithfield management for supporting the union. It supports the union's charge that one worker was assaulted in response to his pro-union activities.

And it concludes that the plant's general manager, Jere Null, was responsible for the presence of county sheriff's deputies in the plant parking lot on the day of the August 1997 vote on union recognition. That day cops dressed in battle gear lined the long driveway leading to the plant. As workers passed by, they saw the head of the Bladen County sheriff's department talking to company management.

West said Null was "not a credible witness" when he denied knowledge that the cops were there. "Null wanted to make a point that the Tar Heel plant was his plant, the union was going to pay a price for its attempt to organize the employees who worked there, and employees who supported the union would have an old-fashioned example of what can occur when they try to bring in a union," the judge wrote.

The ruling also states that the company tried to scare Latino workers into voting against the UFCW by saying the union would report them to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Roughly half of the workforce at the Tar Heel plant are immigrants from Latin America, and the big majority of other workers are Black.

One Latino worker coming off day shift told this reporter he hopes there will be another vote. After working at the plant five years he no longer believes the company. "They talk sweet before the union vote and offer us a raise," he said, "but the way they're running the line and treating people things can't get worse." He said he and other workers he knows are ready to vote for the union this time.

Meanwhile, a civil rights lawsuit filed by the UFCW against Smithfield and the Bladen County Sheriff's Department in August 2000 is pending in a U.S. district court. The suit says the company intimidated workers, pitted Black and Latino workers against each other, and used sheriff's deputies as a private security force to beat and arrest organizers on false charges during the 1997 vote.  
 
 
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